


Mary Makes Waffles

by BloodOrangeSangria



Category: Kakegurui
Genre: F/F, Waffles, Yuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 07:02:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14995400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodOrangeSangria/pseuds/BloodOrangeSangria
Summary: Mary Saotome, as Ririka's servant, is asked to make waffles. How did that happen?





	Mary Makes Waffles

Mary focused at the boxes before her. Eggs. Baking soda. Flour. Sugar. A plate of fresh-cut peaches. A carton of whipping cream. They looked almost like the ingredients for cake, but that was not the idea. 

She was going to make Belgian waffles. 

“Mary, can you make waffles?” Ririka had asked the day before. 

“Huh?!” Mary had exclaimed. The question had come entirely out of the blue. “Never done it.” 

“Oh...I see,” Ririka stated. She looked away, disappointed. 

Mary sighed. With one hand on Ririka’s head, she added, “Just because I’ve never done it before doesn’t mean I can’t  _ try _ , right?”  The smile that followed made her all the more eager to give it a shot. 

Back when they were still in school, Mary had brought her usual bento to lunch. That, at a glance, was much harder to make than these waffles. With sushi, you had to roll it, cut it, and not massacre your fingers in the process. She usually made her lunch the night before; it had become so routine that she didn’t even think about how much effort went into making a lunchbox. 

One day, something different happened at lunchtime. 

A strange rumbling, like distant thunder, followed the snap of her chopsticks. It started as low, indistinguishable murmurs, but escalated into speech as whatever it was got closer to Mary. She could pick apart the sound of footsteps beneath a sea of whispers. 

“The fuck…?” Mary uttered. She didn’t care who was around. The more she listened, the more obvious it became that the noise was somehow her fault. 

“She went that way,” someone said. 

“Did Ms. Saotome get in trouble with the student council, again?” 

“Wouldn’t surprise me...what was it, I wonder?” 

The chatter was occasionally punctuated by a clicking of shoes upon the floor. Mary’s chopsticks hovered over a disembodied octopus tentacle. Gasps followed whoever it was as they made their way towards Mary Saotome. Slowly, she turned. 

She had been expecting Kirari, or maybe that freak with the gun. Her expression went from nervousness to “oh, this again” as Ririka, known to most people as “the Vice President” or “the one with the mask,” stood in front of her with a nicely-wrapped lunchbox in her hands. 

_**“I would like to have lunch, Mary Saotome,”**_ she said. The voice modulator made that simple statement sound like it was being said by an evil overlord. 

“Ah...well, you’ll have to play me for the spot,” Mary challenged, briefly regaining her composure. Ririka shook her head slowly. She didn’t seem to care that roughly two thirds of the student body was focused on them. 

_**“You misunderstand. I would rather that we eat privately. Together.”** _

Mary jolted, dropping her chopsticks into the section with the octopus limb. With her face flushed, she turned to Ririka. “W-what? Seriously?!” Later, her classmates told her that they wished she could have seen the look on her face. 

_**“Yes. Come with me.”** _

Mary tried to hide her nervousness as she looked around at the student body. A trickle of mutters flowed into an ocean.  Did none of them suspect that she and the vice president were really close friends? 

_ Of course not,  _ Mary concluded.  _ They’re probably all scared of her.  _ Few people knew how timid Ririka really was. She needed that mask - or had at least been told that she needed it. In this case, she was also preventing her sister from tarnishing her reputation by being seen with a commoner. 

Mary sighed. “Fine. Whatever.” She tried to make it sound as rough as possible. Anything to hide that Ririka just wanted to eat lunch with her. She was going to play along - for now. Just to be sure nobody questioned anything, she shot the onlookers a few glares as the packed up her lunch, and walked up to the roof.  

“You can take it off, y’know,” Mary told her when they got up. The air outside was nice and warm, at least. “That’s why you came all the way up here, right?” 

Ririka took off her mask. A toss of her head, and her perfectly straight white hair flowed back into place. After that was all done, she nodded. 

Mary smiled. She found a ledge, and patted the spot next to her. Ririka hurried over. Mary couldn’t help but notice that she folded her legs to one side - no doubt the result of wealthy upbringing, being trained to copy Kirari, or both. 

She also couldn’t help but notice Ririka watching like a curious kitten as Mary took her lunchbox apart again. 

“That’s real crab meat, right?” Ririka asked. “And is that pink soy paper making a heart?”  

“You didn’t see that,” Mary uttered, perhaps more harshly than intended. Ririka pulled back, as if she’d done something wrong. 

“Umm...may I try some? I promise I’ll share some of mine, too!” Ririka cringed as though bracing to be hit. Mary mock-swung at her - the punch she gave was nothing more than a gentle tap, accompanied with a wink. 

“Haven’t had anyone ask,” Mary commented. 

“You see, I’ve never had... ’peasant food,’ as my sister calls it.” 

“What _ do  _ you usually eat, anyways?” 

Ririka unwrapped her own lunchbox. Inside was a single dish: a cutlet that looked like chicken, but didn’t smell like it, spread across a bed of fluffy white rice. The entire thing was framed with green sprigs. Mary could feel the luxury dripping from the small container. 

“Is that duck?!” Mary asked. Ririka nodded timidly. 

“Wow...you really do eat expensive stuff!” 

“Would you like to try some?” Ririka asked timidly. An addition of “Mistress” would not have sounded out of place at the end. Mary wondered if Ririka knew she wouldn’t like being called that.  

“Yeah, actually. I’ve never had duck before.” It was true.  

“T-then, please, try some of mine,” Ririka offered. With a “don’t mind if I do!,” Mary stole a little bit of the duck with her chopsticks. 

For a few seconds, she was speechless. The sauce was something sweet - she guessed orange. The meat had a stronger, deeper flavor than chicken. Mary felt a small trickle of drool forming in the corner of her lip. She quickly wiped it off. 

That was one of the best pieces of meat she had ever sampled. Despite it all, something was lacking. Mary couldn’t pinpoint what. 

“Ms. Saotome?” 

“It’s good!” Mary chirped.  She couldn’t put her finger on what, exactly, was missing. Something...maybe its  _ soul  _ was gone? 

She mentally slapped herself. What was she  _ talking  _ about? Food didn’t have a soul. But the sauce was right, the texture was right...what was _wrong?_

“Hey,” Mary said, “I want the recipe for this.” 

“Eh!?” Ririka gasped. 

“I’ve never had duck before, so I’d like to see how you make it.” It was half a lie. Deep down, she knew what was wrong. 

Days later, she saw the kitchen at the Momobami mansion. It hadn’t occurred to her that neither Ririka nor Kirari could cook. Servants for whom Mary did not know the names made all of their meals. With a sinking feeling, Mary realized that they probably had to make the duck she had day in, day out, and twice over.

No wonder something had tasted off. They probably didn’t care, anymore.

“Hey, can I try?” Mary asked. 

The chefs told her their recipe. Mary never called herself a chef, but knew how to follow directions - and, it seemed, how to disobey them. After sampling some of the plum sauce with a spoon, she knew when it needed a little something, if it was too thin, and so on. She was only doing what she thought was right, even if her advice occasionally scared the chefs. 

“I said LESS sauce, not more!” Ririka jumped at the sudden shout that erupted from the kitchen. Kirari only giggled with a hand over her mouth. 

“She’s amazing, isn’t she?” Kirari commented. Ririka was glad Sayaka wasn’t in the room.

“Um...y-you could say that,” Ririka agreed. Deep down, she wished Mary would stop yelling at the kitchen staff to put more feeling into their food. 

Neither of them could argue with the resulting plum-soaked duck afterwards. Mary acted as though her food had better be worth the effort, and ripped into it with gusto. It tasted so much better than what the cooks had done that, later, when she tried it again, it tasted so “blah” it was barely worth eating. 

“You should be our cook!” Ririka suggested. At the time, Mary had no idea that she was serious. 

Years later, the Momobami twins had graduated from high school. Try though they did, they had failed to get Mary into a Life Plan. Runa kept joking about how Mary would get sold to “some pervert,” never revealing that the pervert in question was Kirari. It didn’t matter, in the end. 

After her own graduation, Mary Saotome was politely asked to get a position on staff in the Momobami family’s kitchen. Her shocked expression quickly made way for one of anger hiding beneath boredom. 

“Like hell,” she stated. 

“You would be stupid to refuse,” Kirari explained. She never once broke her poker face. It was always that slightly smug porcelain mask, more fitting for a doll than a human. 

“What makes you think that’ll work  _ this  _ time?” Mary asked. She had refused Kirari before and could refuse again. This time, it wasn't even something as grand as the presidency on the line. What made Kirari think that she would make a good servant? 

S he did not, however, count on Ririka’s presence. The other sister took off her mask, then got on her hands and knees, clasping Mary’s hands in her own. 

“Please, Mary?” Ririka begged. 

“What?” 

“Cook for us!” 

“But I’m not a professional - nowhere near!” Mary objected. 

“Pleeeeeaase?” Ririka looked up at Mary with her sparkling cyan eyes. Every bit of glitter there slowly chipped away at Mary’s resolve. 

“Tch....” Mary restrained a curse behind her teeth. “...fine, I’ll do it for  _ you. _ ” 

Ririka clapped her hands together in happiness. “Thank you, Miss Saotome!” Kirari only watched them with a satisfied smile. 

“I can’t  _ believe  _ you two talked me into this,” Mary grumbled a few days later. She finished putting on her new black maid uniform, complete with a white apron. She was ready to cook whatever her employers - no, her lover - asked of her. A deep breath, and she reminded herself that nobody from Hyakkaou would care. 

Ririka was a klutz in the kitchen; after many attempts to try and teach Ririka to cook, Mary banned her from the stove. She would cook anything Ririka asked as long as it meant  _ not  _ letting the leucistic lady cook. 

That was how, one morning, Mary Saotome found herself staring down an army of baking ingredients. To the left of the lot was a high-end, Belgian imported waffle iron. Thank God the Momobami household was helping to fund this. 

Ririka liked almost anything that Mary cooked. The problem, however, was Kirari. She was so hard to read that it was almost impossible to tell whether she actually liked Mary’s cooking or not. 

“It’s certainly not bad for peasant food,” Kirari told Mary more than once. 

“What’s _ that  _ supposed to mean?!” 

“Mary, I think it’s a compliment,” Ririka commented. The twin-tailed blond didn’t entirely buy it. 

“Do you just enjoy controlling me?!” Mary asked Kirari one day. No answer. Of course not. Maybe today, she would finally get something besides Kirari’s cryptic smile.  

She looked at the ingredients before her like the opponents of a showdown at dawn. Her gaze momentarily switched to the waffle iron she had bought the day before; Kirari assured her that Sayaka would take care of any costs. Sure, she could have gotten some waffles from the grocery store, stuck them in a toaster, and been done with it, but that would be disgraceful. She’d be no better than the other servants if she did that. 

They didn’t care. Cooking was a job that they were paid to do. Did they even know what foods Ririka actually liked? Probably not, and not just because Kirari was more assertive. 

_ For Ririka,  _ she thought,  _ I’m going to make the best damn waffles I can! _

She began running down the ingredient list. 2 cups flour  - easy enough. ¾ cup of sugar - fine. 3-½ teaspoons of baking powder-  not a problem. Milk, butter, vanilla…

_ 2 large eggs - separated?!  _ How the hell was she supposed to do  _ that _ ?!  _ Why _ was she supposed to do that?! According to the recipe, you were just going to merge them back together in a bowl, anyways! Everything else seemed pretty simple; one just had to keep track of what went in what bowl. 

“When in doubt, there’s YourTube,”  Mary muttered. 

The recipe called for melting two whole sticks of butter. Her eyes darted to the servants that had come to fear her the moment she picked up a knife. 

“Hey. What’s the best way to melt butter in this kitchen?” she asked the terrified cooks. “Come on, we don’t have all day!” was enough to get someone from the chef staff proper to show her how to do it right. 

Making waffles was messier than Mary ever thought possible. The dry ingredients weren’t much of a problem - the only issue was that she thought she’d lost count of how many 1/4th cups of sugar she had put in. 

“I only put in three, right?” she asked. One of the people on staff nodded. She shot him an incredulous look, but took his word for it. 

After failing to separate egg yolks from whites three times, one of the cooks finally showed her how to do it using his own hand as a sieve. The yolk rested in his hand while the rest of the fluid dripped down into a separate bowl. 

“Ew,” Mary commented. “Erm, okay, so how do we fluff  _ that _ until it peaks?” 

_ All for Ririka, _ she reminded herself. No matter how gross the egg whites were, this would all be worth it in the end. 

The slime that had emerged from the egg slowly changed form. It went from something that reminded Mary of viscous snot to a white, fluffy cloud in a bowl. Suddenly, she understood why the eggs needed to be separated: the stuff had a completely different texture from the rest of the egg. 

“Hey, let me try folding it!” Mary barked. It wasn’t that hard to crease the batter over the blocks of marshmallow fluff that the egg whites had become. After chopping the block and creasing it into the batter, she felt like she had mastered a new technique. 

_ Am I going to use this for anything else? _   Mary asked herself. Even if she never did, it felt worth doing. 

Maybe it was worth it because she was doing it for Ririka. 

Mary hastily beat the white blocks into the batter. Behind her, the buzz of a timer rang, meaning that the 7,800-yen waffle iron was ready for the mix.  Now it was just a matter of waiting. Supposedly, these waffles only needed a minute and 30 seconds to bake. 

The first two waffles sucked. She had to be assured that that was normal. With a smirk, she thought about finding a way to give them to Sayaka. Then she remembered that Sayaka had helped pay for the waffle iron by doing some accounting, and immediately reconsidered. 

Once she got the hang of it, Mary was able to move the waffles along like an assembly line. Get a plate, put waffles on it - rinse and repeat. Before she knew it, she was grabbing for extra plates. 

With the waffles done, it was time to add her touch to them. It wasn’t much, but Mary was proud of herself for getting whipped cream right. After putting the fluffy stuff in a tube and squeezing, each of her waffles had a generous dollop of whipped cream on it. 

_ Hopefully it won’t be “peasant food,”  _ Mary thought. The last time she made something, Kirari passed most of it to Sayaka. 

_ Come to think of it, Kirari took a bite, then-  _

Mary shook her head, whipping her twintails in the process. She had to focus on making the rest of the waffles perfect. She put the fresh peach slices around the whipped cream like the rays of the sun. 

_ All for you, Riri.  _

It was rare to see Mary nervous. At any rate, it was impossible for her to hide her blush, whether it be from nerves, embarrassment, or love. She could have sworn Kirari was laughing at her behind that smile, or was that just the mask she always wore? 

“Breakfast is served,” Mary managed to squeeze out after giving everybody a plate. She glanced up to see Ririka’s blue eyes sparkling. That one moment of eye contact was followed by a hug. 

“Mary, those look wonderful!” Ririka commented. 

“They were made just for you,” Mary said. The smile that followed was the most genuine, bright show of happiness that Mary could manage. 

She felt her heartbeat getting louder and louder as she placed the waffles around Kirari’s too-large table. It had no less than a dozen seats. Really, only she, Ririka, Sayaka, and Mary would sit there- if the maid was even allowed. 

Ririka still ate like a lady: dainty, small bites. It only took a taste of peaches, cream, and waffles to make her face light up. 

“These are so good!” Ririka gushed. 

“Erk...I’m glad you like them,” Mary said from inside the hug. 

She tried to scry Kirari’s feelings after Ririka let go, allowing her to resume her duties. She had one of those smug smiles on. Did she think that Mary couldn’t cook anywhere near as good as her cooks did? No, she had hired her. Did she just get high on controlling Mary by default? After a flashback of their school days, Mary realized that might well be the case. 

_ “Impress me.” Is that your expression, Kirari? As you wish, your majesty… _

She continued distributing the plates. Kirari was almost always right next to Ririka. She’d been pranked by them more than once. That snobby, “rich girl” attitude, however, was most definitely Kirari Momobami. 

_ Eat it. _

Mary tried to keep a straight face as Kirari slowly cut a bite out of one of her waffles. Every scrape of the knife was agony. She must have been taking her time, just to leave Mary hanging. 

A slice with peaches and cream passed Kirari’s lips. She didn’t even smear her lipstick as she ate. Mary wondered how that was possible. 

“Hm-hm...not bad, Miss Saotome,” Kirari stated. Shortly after, Sayaka was summoned over for her own bite. 

_ Like a trained dog, _ Mary thought. Then, she realized Sayaka blushed every time she took a bit of food from Kirari’s fork.  

_ Lucky dog.  _

“Mary, you should have a bite, too,” Ririka said, putting a piece on a fork. She gently nudged it against Mary’s lips. It took a bit of prodding, but Mary eventually clamped down on the fork. 

She felt a tear stream down her face. This delicious waffle was the result of love and hard work. Then, she wiped it off with a hand, and mustered the softest smile that Ririka had ever seen come from her maid. 

“They really are good!” Mary said. With a blush, she added, “Want more? We...kinda made too much.” 

Mary was immediately silenced by a forkful of waffle in her mouth. She chose to take it as a yes.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I made waffles in meatspace to prepare for this fic. They were delicious! If you want to try it for yourself, the recipe I was going off of is here: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/true-belgian-waffles
> 
> A lot of Mary's complaints came directly from my own experiences making them. Have fun and enjoy!


End file.
